


girl crush

by zimtlein



Category: Emily in Paris (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, F/M, Fantasizing, Heartache, Mild Sexual Content, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:21:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27024979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zimtlein/pseuds/zimtlein
Summary: Thinking and drowning and knowing - she’s losing him.
Relationships: Camille/Emily Cooper (Emily in Paris) (implied), Camille/Gabriel (Emily in Paris), Emily Cooper/Gabriel (Emily in Paris) (implied)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 48





	girl crush

**Author's Note:**

> me taking a lighthearted series way too seriously, the fanfic
> 
> inspired by [Girl Crush](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYZMT8otKdI) from Little Big Town

No visible trace. No smudge of red. No warm smile. Paris is cold, and so is his touch. Camille pretends not to notice. Pretends to watch the weeping sky. Everything is all right, and everything will be okay. Futures are meant to be dreamed of. So she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t raise an eyebrow at his uncharacteristic clumsiness. Sweeps the floor calmly and soundlessly, ignoring his curses. Collecting shards. One of so many. Nothing to be angry about.

She could ask. Worst thing is, she probably knows the answer. Worst thing is, she is sure she knows the answer. He could have had thousands of girls. She thought he chose her for a reason. She chose him for a reason. Because their nights were passionate and their days were bright, and now clouds flock her view.

“Hard day at work, huh?” Her smile feels displaced. He doesn’t look at her.

“Yeah. That too.”

“Too?”

“Yeah. That. Mostly that.”

She doesn’t press him.

She takes a shower, doesn’t cry. Nothing to cry about. Looks at herself in the mirror, at blonde hair and bright eyes. Beautiful, he used to say. Whispered the sweetest words into her ear. Natural, her mother said. After that long – passion is a flame, so easily squelched. Is that it? Is it new? Exciting?

Exciting.

She imagines it. Imagines pale fingers and red, red lips. So innocent, and that’s just how it is. With long lashes and lips, red as blood. The innocent ones, they know their sins best. She imagines it – warmth against warmth. Imagines a body, a bit bonier than hers, fingernails raking over ribs. Imagines perky breasts and a shallow breath. Sweet, sweet sounds. Sounds she doesn’t know how to make.

She’s turned on. She presses the tips of her finger against the sink. She isn’t going to touch herself. Not at the thought of strawberry lips. She isn’t going to touch herself. She stares at her own eyes. Darkened. Challenging. Ready to bite. Her heart is pounding against her chest. Maybe, somewhere, maybe she could understand.

Swaying, lightheaded, she enters the bedroom. He is already in bed, blanket covering his torso. Her throat feels too tight. She breathes. Lifts the blanket, slips in. It’s raining. The sound is intoxicating. She looks at the ceiling. A slim, pale body up there. Resting, lying, waiting. Even without lipstick – a red mouth, waiting to be kissed. Is that what he saw? Is that what she wanted him to see?

“I like Emily,” she says. “Do you?”

The answer should be immediate and honest, and he hesitates. Of course he does. It breaks her heart, and she waits.

“Sure.” A safe option. She isn’t surprised.

“She is quite something, huh?”

“She is.”

“Pretty cute, too.”

He laughs. A shimmer of suspicion in his eyes. She returns his smile. Her cheeks ache from the unnatural movement.

“I wouldn’t disagree,” he says.

“Oh?”

“You started it.”

“No worries. I’m just kidding.”

She is, she is. She is kidding so much that she leans forward to capture his lips in a light kiss. A taste she doesn’t recognize – or maybe she is imagining it. But there’s something cute and innocent Emily doesn’t have. Not yet. Not yet, anyway – and that’s him.

For now.

She isn’t stupid. She isn’t blind. She’s only blind to the truth. It’s easier to look away when he doesn’t. It’s easier to anchor herself to that one thing she has – his hand in hers. His kisses were sweet at first, and now they seem nonchalant. A sign of trust – a sign of withering. So she does the same. So she stares. At slender, endlessly long legs. At soft curls. At incredibly large eyes.

If Emily was as innocent as she’d like to pretend, she wouldn’t dress like this. Proper and neat, playful and coy. If Emily was as innocent as she’d like to pretend, she wouldn’t paint her lips the deepest red there is, wouldn’t smile in the dazzling way she does. If she was as innocent, she wouldn’t throw heavy glances at someone who doesn’t belong to her.

Why?

But the why is easy to spot. It’s in her sweet words and in her natural scent. It’s in her breezy words. Maybe Camille understands – she isn’t stupid, after all.

Red lips begging to be ravished.

Long legs begging to be touched.

Slender neck begging to be kissed.

Sweetness begging to be worshiped.

She watches him looking at Emily, and she watches Emily looking at him, and something pools in her stomach. Hot and consuming, painful and pushing – pushing her to bite back anything that rests on her tongue, and she smiles instead. Nothing happened, nothing ever happened, she tells herself on and on. Nothing happened, and when they arrive at home, she pushes him against the wall, looks at him, lowers her voice and lowers her tone.

“Do you want her?”

Momentary surprise, a sharp breath, eyes widening – just the slightest bit of guilt, and it’s a bit amusing and a bit sad, but she doesn’t have it in her to laugh. Second after second. Her breaths are trembling, and her knees are too.

“Of course not,” he says.

The answer she hoped for, the answer she dreaded. It’s unmistakable, in his tone and in his reaction, and she leans closer. Not quite kissing him. It’s the distance that must make it exciting. She doesn’t know if she would agree.

“You don’t? You don’t? You used to look at me like this too. Before we fucked for the first time.”

She feels him shiver. At least she is granted that much.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I bet you do. I bet you want to fuck her just the same.”

“I don’t.”

“What if I want you to? Fuck her right next to me. Both of us. Imagine. Or we pleasure her. Until she screams. How about it?”

He laughs, uncertain. Averts his eyes. Too much truth to discover. He can’t move away. Can’t escape. As little as she can. The words taste bitter and heavenly. Like the only punishment left. She presses herself closer. Lips brushing his. Hers aren’t bright red. Hers are pale. She imagines tasting her on his lips. Her, sweetness and innocence. Cherry and strawberry. Red like blood. Heart pumping, he can’t even deny the obvious, and she grabs his chin to make him look at her.

“What do you think?”

“What’s gotten into you, Camille?”

The poison of an unheavenly creature, masking any stab underneath dazzling smiles. But she doesn’t say so, and instead she kisses him. Hungrily, desperately. Imagines the disgust she would feel as he’d kiss pale skin, paler than hers; as he’d whisper sweet nothings to a woman he doesn’t belong to. Sweetness is to be broken apart, and at least that much Camille would enjoy. Kissing her until she bleeds, driving her higher until she breaks, watching the mess of something that was thought of as perfection. There, even the most innocent can fall, and they break more easily than most.

Camille should know.

She encourages him to think about Emily, tells him to do so. Wants to cry and scream when she notices how much it turns him on. Wants to ram her nails into his flesh. She leaves scratches and trails, leaves bruises and marks. She thinks about Emily, about the sounds she would make. Thinks about her eyes and her smile. Thinks about her body and her breasts. Thinks about her scent and her voice. Thinks until she cries in all honesty, and her climax shakes her and destroys her, leaves her in pieces.

There, entirely undone, entirely at anyone’s mercy, she lies in his arms and prays to god she’ll survive this, that she’ll survive.

“You never cried before,” he says. “Should I worry?”

“No.” She tries to smile. No one can see it in the dark. “It was intense. That’s all.”

“It was.”

Neither of them says it, but Camille knows her taste is on his tongue, the taste of purity.

Seems like an angel, an otherworldly being as she captures the view before them in one photo. A laughable effort, and yet Emily shines so bright it burns her eyes. With her cute dress, and the cute way she holds her phone, and with how her hair sways in the wind as she looks over her shoulder, smiling at her.

“You need to be in there too.”

“Oh no,” Camille laughs. “I’d ruin the scenery.”

“Nonsense! Anything but. Now come here.”

Emily’s arm around her waist burns. Her body is warm, slender, fragile. When Camille smiles, it looks unnatural, and yet Emily looks delighted as she stares at the photo. Delighted, genuine – with features that are too soft to describe.

Slowly, she starts to understand.

She starts to understand as they walk on, arms linked and warm skin touching. She starts to understand as soft laughter rings in her ears, appreciating the tiniest of oddities. Even as the sun starts to set, bright eyes illuminate growing shadows, and she finds herself unable to look away, to walk away.

She knows. God, she knows.

Thousand opportunities. She wonders what he must have felt. She wonders what Emily would do. If she’d shy away if their lips met. If she’d hesitantly kiss her back. If she is bolder than she seems, if sinful innocence tastes just like it looks.

She wonders what he must have felt. If the longing seemed insurmountable. If his heart pounded just as hard. If his stomach was in knots. If he stared at her lips, hoping so hard she would notice, hoping so hard she would never notice. If he felt guilty, or excited. If he felt like a bad person, or if it was just natural to him.

The sun sets for good. Shadows dance over her face in hypnotizing patterns. Red, red lips. If she were to bite them, make them bleed, she wonders where it would lead them. To unknown depths – or to a place that would rip her heart out.

But there is just one truth that she can’t forget about.

“You and Gabriel have grown closer, haven’t you? I’m glad. He was giving you a hard time, huh?”

A wince, almost unnoticeable. Sudden goosebumps, Emily moves her arm away. Pretends to smooth down her skirt. Always the same, and for a moment, Camille wonders if that’s just it – if pain is starting to get her off, if she can’t help herself.

“I’m glad it seems so.”

Does she, or is she lying to herself?

“He can be hard to decipher from time to time, though.”

Camille wants to laugh. She can’t. “And other times, he’s quite obvious.”

“When it regards his opinion about food, then yes.”

“He’s a picky eater for sure. Only the finest tastes. Or something.”

“He is? Never seemed like a picky eater to me.”

A tasteful of here, a tasteful of there; must be nice, tasting the most forbidden fruit of all, and there she is, close enough to touch, yet a temptation too distant.

“I like to tease him about it,” Camille says.

“Oh, yeah. Teasing him must be fun.”

Teasing him must be fun, certainly.

She wants to laugh at the irony of it all. She dies to kiss her, to taste what he tasted. To know what he knows. To understand what he understands. But the day passes by, and she isn’t stupid. She wishes she was. Then she wouldn’t have to think about the shimmer in Emily’s eyes, and the guilt in her words, and the stammering in her excuses. Then she wouldn’t have to face it – that no matter what she tries to tell herself, neither Emily nor he texted her back the whole evening, and the whole night, and the whole morning.

She doesn’t need it spelled out. She just needs it gone.

She’d rather have it be her. She’d rather lick drops of sweat off Emily’s skin than knowing he does so. She’d rather kiss red lipstick off perfect lips than knowing he does so. She’d rather have a tiny piece than nothing at all, and she’d rather throw away her pride than the last bit of sanity.

The clear sky above her. The smell of nature, of lush grass and summer evenings. Peaceful, dwindling. The world doesn’t stop turning. It’s not like she doesn’t understand him. All the love, and all her heart, and all of her – swept under the rug by a pretty daydream.

She wishes she could hate Emily. She longs for her so much her heart is ripped apart, longs for all she has. She wishes she could hate Emily, and all she wants is to make her all hers, to eat her up and break her apart and patch her up again.

She wishes Emily was hers. She wishes at least one person could belong to her, and only her.


End file.
